‘Ad­ver­tise­ment govt’ has done lit­tle for city, says Sheila

NEW DELHI: Call­ing it an ‘ad­ver­tise­ment gov­ern­ment’, for­mer Delhi chief min­is­ter Sheila Dik­shit hit out at the AAP dis­pen­sa­tion for boast­ing of de­vel­op­ment in ad­ver­tise­ments even though no progress was vis­i­ble in the city.

“Peo­ple call this not the AAP gov­ern­ment, but the ad­ver­tise­ment gov­ern­ment. They surely ad­ver­tise ev­ery­where, but you can’t see the work done,” said Dik­shit, the three-term chief min­is­ter who was up­staged by the AAP.

“They spend more on ad­ver­tise­ments. They talk more and get lot of cov­er­age in news­pa­pers. Even ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture is col­laps­ing. Roads are bro­ken and fenc­ing of Bara­pul­lah fly­over and Sal­im­garh by­pass are dam­aged. This is a mat­ter of con­cern,” she said.

Dik­shit was speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence or­gan­ised by the Delhi Congress to list out the ‘fail­ures’ of AAP gov­ern­ment which was cel­e­brat­ing its third an­niver­sary. Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken also ad­dressed the press con­fer­ence.

Maken said that that AAP has turned out to be Khap (Khas Aadmi Party).

He spoke at length about how the gov­ern­ment had de­railed de­vel­op­ment in Delhi, and had even com­pro­mised on their prin­ci­ples. He com­pared the Dik­shit gov­ern­ment’s work in the dif­fer­ent sec­tors, in­clud­ing public trans­port, health, ed­u­ca­tion, power, and en­vi­ron­ment over 15 years, to that of the AAP gov­ern­ment, and said how it had failed.

“In last three years, the Delhi gov­ern­ment has added only one bus to DTC’S fleet. ( With re­duced bus rid­er­ship as well) how will pol­lu­tion not in­crease in Delhi? ,” he said.

“About 98,000 gov­ern­ment school stu­dents have mi­grated to pri­vate school over the years. They did not open a sin­gle new hos­pi­tal,” Maken said, list­ing AAP gov­ern­ment’s fail­ures in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.